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Stories from Adoptive Parents

An Adoptive Mother's Tale: Fending Off the Slings and Arrows of Innocent Statements

Rowan Moore wrote this article for the Winter 2000 Open Page, the newsletter of Open Adoption & Family Services.

When my daughter was about 5 months old an acquaintance I was having an exchange with casually asked me how my baby's real mother was. As her mouth formed the word real I could see she wanted to suck it back in and make another selection. I quickly and nonjudgmentally said, birthmother. My daughter's birthmother was fine. We had just had a second visit with her and it was all fine. As I drove home I felt quite proud of myself for seizing that moment so quickly and cleanly, taking the opportunity to educate the general public. I thought a lot about that notion of real. The real mother. To my daughter, as she is about to be a year old I am her real mother.

Recently though, again because of an innocent comment made in passing by a business associate, I have begun to wonder if I am a real mother. This near stranger referred to me as an honorary mother in contrast to a friend who has two children whom she gave birth to. I have thought about it a lot over the past few days and before the comment was made too. What makes me a real mother? What gives me the right to claim this most desirable and fulfilling title? After all, I did not conceive, I did not give birth as all mothers do.

I have decided that one simple fact makes me a mother and it is this; I mother her. I hold her and feed her, sing to her, talk to her, show her things, love her. I do all the things I know my mother did for me. I n our lives we are all afraid that we will be found out, somehow exposed for the shams we are. From little things about our appearances to big things like our ability to perform our jobs.

As an adoptive mother I guess I worried that my daughter would one day have that realization that I was not her birthmother, but a surrogate, a pale stand in, a sham. This was my fear pure and simple. My defense against this fear is that I go on mothering, doing my job, loving her, and being there for her so that when the moment of discerning comes in her life she will know what a real mother looks like and she will recognize that person is me.